Document browsing such as web browsing constitutes a major portion of Internet usage by individuals and user experience with browsers is the basic metric in the choice of web browsers. Over the past decade, a number of web browsers such as Microsoft Internet Explorer, Firefox, Netscape, AOL Explorer etc. emerged with oft-times intense competition for a user audience. Many outstanding features have surfaced, including toolbars, plug-ins, shortcut maintenance and even built-in editing and composing. Most recently, the constructs for Web 2.0 were introduced for maintaining web dialogs that have the responsiveness and appearance of normal “desktop” applications.
A major flaw has emerged with the advent of AJAX via the XMLHttpRequest Object and other direct DOM changes made by scripts. The flaw is that there is no convenient means for the user to capture a particular dynamic content as in prior art by simply copying the present navigation link for the presently shown page. This has failed, too, in the prior art for any stateful interactions one may have when navigating as the session data and local cookies will carry different information.
Furthermore, there exists no means for one user to convey accurately the list of steps for another to follow when instructing how to perform certain tasks with stateful web location, because one may have to navigate a complex maze of choices, including logging into the site. Certain navigation enablement is allowed for example, for navigating to prior pages (“back navigation”) and previously visited (in the forward direction) pages (“forward navigation”). Logically, these navigation means can be disabled for use until circumstances permit the “Back” or “Forward” navigation buttons. As is typical of web pages there can exist a plurality of event types in the browser display wherein clicking can instigate a navigation to a URI, or the instantiation of a script that ultimately alters the DOM, which in turn is reflected in the displayed web page.
Thus, those skilled in the art seek methods, apparatus and computer program products that overcome the limitations of the prior art.